


one day the blood won't flow so gladly

by harukatenoh



Series: we're on each other's team [2]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Explosions, Gen, Injury, Introspection, Light Angst, i ... think?, weird teammate bonding over near death experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21804694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harukatenoh/pseuds/harukatenoh
Summary: Damian does something stupid. Lian finds him in the aftermath, and picks up the pieces. Because this is Damian and Lian, it includes a far greater amount of emotional constipation than usual.
Relationships: Lian Harper & Damian Wayne
Series: we're on each other's team [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567885
Kudos: 26





	one day the blood won't flow so gladly

**Author's Note:**

> i love this universe huh. ily bea
> 
> work title from a world alone by lorde!

When Damian blinks his eyes open, having previously been thrown shut from the explosion, he has no vision at all. Everything is black, and more alarmingly: everything hurt. It is a hurt that hits him out of nowhere, surging like a wave, overtaking any other awareness he had previously retained.

Damian attempts to categorize his injuries, but all he can manage is identifying his stomach wound, before it all blurs into one unilateral  _ hurt. _

He attempts at sitting up, to gain better vantage for assessing his injuries, but at the slight movement the pain strangles him, and he abandons the try. 

Fuck, it hurts. There is a ringing in his ears, but Damian cannot tell whether it is from the blow, or whether his comms had short-circuited. Either way, he cannot hear anything but the high-pitched whining being produced, and he doesn’t think he can contact anybody.

He should not have gone out alone. The information sits heavily in his mind; it is the only thing he can coherently think about: he should not have gone out alone. He does not know if anybody is coming to find him. He is bleeding out, and there is nobody coming for him.

Then, a sound so familiar he can hear it above the shrieking of his ears and the thumping of his heart rings out. The  _ hiss-tang-thwack _ of an arrow being released and hitting its target. A  _ click _ follows, and then a smaller, far more contained explosion than the one that had just ripped through him occurs.

He thinks  _ cave-in. _ He thinks  _ nobody is coming. _ He hears footsteps.

He struggles to move, to get away from the approaching presence. He refuses to die in a dirty warehouse in New York City, and refuses even more vehemently to be finished off by some two-bit henchman. He does not get far; the pain rips through him again, hot and fast and virulent like wildfire, and he screams.

The person’s footsteps quicken, and before Damian can muster another attempt at moving, they are by his side.

He tries to say something, but blood pools behind his teeth; it is a vile tasting death sentence. All he can find the power to do is open his eyes, so he does.

There are hands on his face, brushing his hair away from the cuts on his forehead, peeling off his mask. He can’t even bring himself to protest. He blinks up, the lights of the warehouse spiking in his vision, at his saviour.

Dark hair, narrowed eyes, bitten lips. Damian can feel his blood soaking through his costume. He coughs, feels the blood coat his mouth, and despite everything, sends unspoken gratitude to whoever above is watching out for him. He hadn’t been praying, but he had been answered, regardless.

Lian strokes his cheek, murmuring something that Damian can’t quite make out at first.

“Em ơi, không sao đâu, chị ở đây,” she says, wiping away the tears forming in his eyes. Everything  _ aches, _ a pain so enormous he cannot truly comprehend it.

Then, there is pressure against his wound, and his rational mind whispers  _ staunching the blood flow _ , but the rest of him  _ screams. _ He begs, incoherent, the pain radiating out from his wound, begs for it to be done with.

“Shhh,” Lian hushes, her face swimming in and out of his vision. “Damian,” she says, “Are you with me?”

Her words garble together in Damian’s head and he can’t understand anything she’s saying; there is a distance between him and the rest of the world that he cannot possibly overcome. He is drifting far away. He is at the point of no return.

More blood comes up his throat, congealing on his tongue and stealing his words. Still, he manages to scramble something together, gasping out “You are too far,”

He does not know what he means to say by that.  _ You are too late. You can’t help. You were never there at the start.  _ None of those things are exactly truthful.

“No,” Lian says, her voice suddenly hard. “I’m right here. Damian.” 

Her leader's voice. Lian, out of the three of them, uses it the least. It makes it the most effective. Damian takes in a shuddering breath.

“It’s going to be fine,” Lian says.

He coughs again, the blood coming up in spurts. Lian gently turns his head to the side so he can spit, and the gesture makes his eyes prickle with tears of resentment and gratitude.

He chokes out “It hurts,” because it does, and he’s dying, and he does not have the energy to hide the truth. Bleeding out with his teammate by his side in a dirty warehouse is an improvement from before, but barely. 

It is an indignity, to die like this. It would be more of an indignity if anybody else that Damian knew was knelt beside him. Lian’s sharp gaze, as he bleeds out, is mercy, more than anything. 

Damian turns his head back weakly and stares at her. 

Her expression is brittle and cold as she stares back. It is the porcelain hardness of the Cheshire mask, except Lian has never worn a mask. Claims she does not need one. 

Damian realizes that she is right, as he looks up at her. She  _ is  _ the mask and she is the executor and she is the saviour, and Damian stares at her through blurry eyes and wonders if she hates him. It does not matter either way, but he wonders.

Then again.

Then again. Her hands are gentle where they touch him, and her words are careful when they reach him.

Lian looks down at him with her cold eyes and she says “It’s going to be okay, Damian. Irey is on her way. We’re going to get you to a hospital. Then, when you’re better, I’m going to kill you for this,”

Damian cannot sense whether she believes what she is saying. The porcelain gleams, shifts, but does not crack.

There is a ghost of a smile on Lian’s face now, but he cannot focus on it. 

All he can concentrate on, echoing in his ears, is  _ Irey is on her way.  _

Iris is currently in California visiting her family. 

Damian is currently in New York, bleeding out. Iris was with her family, and now she will be here instead. It stings at him, a thousand bites from a thousand wasps, the agony of knowing this is his fault. It was his weakness, and his incapability. 

The hurt that digs into him this time is not fully physical. This is what he has begotten.

He weakly says “She was with her family.” He sounds like a child, and he hates himself for it.

Lian nods. Lian, as he knew she would, understands. Damian is beginning to go numb, now; he can barely feel her hand on his stomach, or her hand in his hair.

She repeats “She was with her family,” and it is almost worse than a death sentence.

“She hadn’t seen them in a while,” Damian says. His voice sounds airy, far away. 

Iris West is a miracle among the Titans. A lightning storm of a girl with a steady conductor family at her back. Iris is not Lian, and she is not Damian—thank god for that, on both accounts. Iris’ family, too, is not Damian’s, and is not Lian’s.

Lian looks down on him with all-knowing, cold eyes, and says “You know Irey.”

Damian does. He knows Iris. She is a better person than him and Lian combined, and that she wants to lump herself in with them is incomprehensible. 

It has happened over and over again, but Damian will never quite understand how there are people that simply  _ want  _ to fall into step with him. Pull him closer. Keep him steady. Iris is running across the country for him and he suddenly feels small, stupid—and above all, tired.

It hurts to look at the lights for too long—Damian’s head is spinning. He closes his eyes. Lian makes a noise, and it is some kind of disapproval, some kind of despair. 

She says, from beyond the darkness surrounding Damian, “Irey considers us a part of her family too,”

Damian, petty, stubborn, fierce, does not want Iris to come rushing to save him. The only worse thing he can think of is if she had been the one to find him in this stupid warehouse in stupid New York stupidly bleeding out in the first place. She would have been so upset. So distraught. She would have tripped over her words of reassurance and her words of lecture and her words of love, and Damian does not take that sort of kitschy bedside manner. 

Worst of all, she would have forgiven him. She would look at the evidence of Damian’s downfalls and disgrace, and she would have absolved him of his sins. He cannot feel the warmth of his own blood anymore, soaked into his skin as it is. Iris, or Richard, or even his father, would’ve seen him lying in a pool of his blood and brushed past his mistakes.

But they are not here, and Lian is. Lian Harper is mercy. Lian Harper understands. 

Damian opens his eyes, and it is the greatest effort he has felt.

The mask and the executor and the saviour, Lian Harper looks at him with eyes that are neither condemning or exonerating; she looks at him and sees his mistakes and sees his flaws and sets her jaw and says “You aren’t dying here.”

Damian wants to nod, but he cannot move his head. No. Damian is not dying here. He is acquainted with the consequences of his mistakes; he was raised to understand the significance of every slip-up he made, every error he committed. There is no consequence greater than death, but that is not true.

For Damian knows, and Lian knows, that the greatest consequence is to err, and to come back. Death takes away all responsibility, and it takes away retribution, but coming back? Living?

Living is a price that is paid every day.

Damian takes in his first proper breath since a stray explosion tore him apart. 

There is quiet approval in Lian’s eyes.

“Brat,” she says, a familiar scowl settling into place. “I’m benching you,”

Damian coughs. “You cannot tell me what to do.”

Lian huffs. “Dick will be on my side.”

“Richard cannot tell me what to do, either,”

Lian snorts. “Alright,” she says, as a blur of red and white blasts through the factory. “That’s enough lies out of you for today,”

Iris, suited up in her Impulse costume and face flaming, comes to a stop in front of him. There are tears in her eyes. She says “Damian Wayne, I am going to fucking kill you for this,”

“Get in line,” Lian says primly.

Damian, through his tears and blood and hurt, laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> so in this au, after lian "dies" (she comes back, somehow) she is raised by jade for a while, which leads to the as-per-usual traumatizing and fundamentally personality altering assassin child training bullshit etc etc. as u can appreciate, this leads to her and damian having a Very Fucking Weird Relationship With Each other. self recognition thru the other babey
> 
> viet translates to 'little brother/sibling, its okay, i (big sister) am here now'


End file.
